Most likely annoyed by the new Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity, able to manage 6 displays, and by AMD strategy to take shares of its niche markets, Matrox fired back with a new graphic card: M9188.

This card scored a new record as it is able to manage simultaneously up to 8 displays. I features 1 or 2 GB of VRAM and is installed on a PCI Express 16x slot. Matrox does not plan to compete on the market of graphic cards dedicated to games, but develop solutions allowing simultaneous management of several displays as used in airport, stock exchange places, video-controlled operation centers, etc.

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A Single Graphic Card to Control 8 Displays originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 12, 2009.

Time Machine is good, but sometimes glitchy, with remote disks connected to AirPort Extreme behaving erratically, and other limitations to what you can do – not least that you can’t back your data up online. And that’s where new cross platform backup solution, CrashPlan steps in.

Developers, Code 42 Software offer the solution, making it available free to consumer and small business users, with the more powerful and robust CrashPlan+ service introduced yesterday for enterprise users (which costs $59 US for real-time backup and web restores). In other words, this easy-to-use solution scales for every user, from individual to enterprise users.

The software will automatically back your data up to other computers, external hard drives or even the company’s eminently affordable online back-up service. (And it’s all protected by hardcore security protocols – CrashPlan+ offers 448-bit encryption).

Online service, CrashPlan Central, offers unlimited online backup/storage and costs from as little as $3.50 US per month for individuals and under $5.00 for a family plan (there’s a free 30-day trial, also). You're not required to sign up to CrashPlan Central though, because CrashPlan can back up to friends’ computers for free.

The software is widely compatible – Windows, OS X, Linux or even Solaris platforms are all covered. Users can backup in multiple ways: locally, remotely and online. CrashPlan also offers automatic backup, which the company claims to be so efficient users won’t even be able to tell it’s going on.

The solution reduces file size by using advanced compression technology. It identifies duplicate files and parts of files and stores them only once. When files change, only the new information is backed up.

Once your files are backed up, CrashPlan continuously checks your files are 100% healthy and ready to restore when you need them. If it finds any problems, it fixes them.

CrahPlan+ offers version retention – the ability to specify rules for removing versions and files from your backup after you no longer care about them. It’s also pretty easy to set the frequency of backups and the number of versions to keep, using slider controls to specify versions to retain over specific periods.

The user can set the frequency of backup, for example: hourly for the first week, while a file is being worked on, then retaining fewer versions as the file gets older.

Code 42's co-founder Matthew Dornquast said, "Relying on cloud computing as your only backup can be dangerous, as Sidekick users recently found out. CrashPlan can back up to local disk, a friend's disk, and the cloud in the form of CrashPlan Central. Spreading the risk this way make your data safer."
"Other backup systems use disk space in a comparatively wasteful way. CrashPlan's frugal approach means less disk space and backups are faster and much more efficient."

CrashPlan works on PCs, Macs, Linux and Solaris. It will also back up from any of the operating systems listed to any other platform it supports.
 

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CrashPlan – a cross-platform, affordable, powerful backup solution originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on October 22, 2009.

Unless you’re very lucky, you’re likely stuck in an office that has coffee somewhere between “drinkable” and “intestine-wrenching”. Use this guide to increase the quality of your office-coffee experience. Photo by Stephen Cumming.

Office coffee is generally pretty awful. Purchasing a quality coffee machine, quality coffee, and orchestrating the two in any semblance of order is apparently quite low on the list of priorities for most managers. The following tips will help you take the “stock” setup and make the most of it and provide alternatives if the stock setup is just too awful to even salvage.

Clean the Coffee Maker: This is your absolute first order of business. Have you ever actually seen someone clean the coffee maker? No, you haven’t. You must operate under the assumption that the coffee maker has never, ever been cleaned. If it looks old enough to have been cranking out caffeinated slurry to jittery Cold War-era workers, then you must assume it’s still got the funk of rancid Reagan-era coffee oil upon it.

How do you clean a coffee maker? There are two principle enemies to good flavor hiding in an uncleaned coffee machine. Minerals from the water and oil—which turns rancid—from the coffee accumulated in the machine. You need an acidic fluid to purge the nastiness. You can purchase a cleaner made specifically for coffee makers but in all but the most horrifically neglected coffee machines it should suffice to use vinegar which is much cheaper.

Mix 1 part white vinegar to 2 parts water. You’ll need to mix enough to fill the reservoir of the machine. Throw a filter in the machine and run the solution through. You’ll need to do this at least once, but we’d recommend running a fresh batch of cleaner through until the water in the pot is clear. For a particularly dirty machine you’ll end up with a few pots of nasty tea-colored water. Follow up the cleaning procedure by running clean water through the machine until the water no longer has a vinegar smell, usually two cycles should do the trick. At this point a once-a-month rinse with vinegar should keep things funk-free. With a clean pot we can move onto the actual coffee production. Photo by pvera.

Brew the Coffee Properly: If you do any reading at all on coffee and coffee preparation you’ll find quite an array of opinions. When it comes to simple drip brewing using a run-of-the-mill office coffee pot things are pretty cut and dry. There is the ass-backwards terrible way to make coffee and the way to make good coffee that won’t make anyone’s large intestine rebel and attempt to kill them.

Use the best coffee you can get your hands on, convince your office mates to chip in for, squeeze out of the office budget, etc. You don’t need coffee hand picked by angels and ground by a $1000 Italian bean-grinder, but buying coffee from a local roaster and getting away from some generic vacuum-sealed pouches that get delivered by the same guy that delivers the toilet paper refills and cleans rugs every Monday will go a long way towards better flavor. Photo by D’Arcy Norman.

Don’t use too much coffee. Filling the basket to the top won’t make bad coffee taste better. In fact, it’ll make bad coffee taste worse. Cheap coffee usually has a higher caffeine content to begin and not so great flavor. Putting more in the pot just means more of the nasty-tasting and caffeine-laced swill will be pounding your gut. A tablespoon of coffee per cup of coffee to be brewed is just fine. Less will make the coffee watery and more won’t make it better.

Don't leave the coffee to sit on the warming plate. This is how even good coffee is reduced to a chewy garbage. Leaving it on the hot plate, and trust us that plate is plenty hot to ruin coffee, will just lead to the coffee being over-brewed and distilled down into a bitter mess. If you can't convince your office to shell out for a thermal carafe—like the self-fill stations you see at coffee houses and airport coffee kiosks—then at minimum you want to invest in a small thermos so you can store your day's worth of coffee safe from the hot plate.

Designate a Coffee Maker: If you ever take time to watch what happens to a poor coffee pot during the course of the day, you’ll be astounded. People put the pot back empty and leave the coffee dross to bake right onto the pot. They overfill the basket, they pack the grounds down like tobacco chew, they run the tap water hot and pour it into the reservoir. Most people are terrible at making coffee, despite how simple the process looks. If you’re fired up about getting good coffee at work you might have to shoulder the burden of being the guy or gal that makes the coffee, if for no other reason than to avoid drinking the garbage everyone else makes. If you’ve had luck with getting your boss to shell out for a thermal carafe this will make your job easier.

When to Bite the Bullet and Self-Brew: Perhaps when you bring up the state of poor coffee in your office, things will go well. "My God Johnson, you're right! The coffee is terrible around here! I insist you go buy us a respectable coffee pot and the best coffee you can find." You might be able to get your boss and coworkers on board with throwing in a few bucks a month to buy better coffee and thermal carafe to keep it hot and fresh all day. If nobody cares—and some people consider it a point of pride and intestinal fortitude that they drink nasty coffee—you're on your own.

At this point your best bet, since you’ll be fending for yourself and not paying to fuel an army of workers with premium coffee, would be to brew at home and bring your coffee in a high-quality thermos. Barring that, if your office has a hot water on-demand tap in the breakroom you can use that to brew your coffee using a French press or AeroPress. Photo by Rick.

Finally, whether you make the most of your “stock” office setup or you bring your own brewing gear from home, make sure to read over some of our previous coffee guides for extra tips such as brewing the best possible coffee without breaking the bank, and top 10 tips and tricks for better coffee.

Have your own tips, tricks, or stories of office coffee brewing, to share? Let’s hear them in the comments.

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Make the Most of Office Coffee [Coffee] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 24, 2009.

Filed under: Video, Cool tools, How-tos, Mac mini, iPhone

What do you get when you combine a new parent on maternity leave with a love of gadgets and Apple products? Why, you get “baby monitor overkill!”

In response to Dave Caolo‘s recent ode to the Mac mini, I figured it was time to step up. I had two things gathering dust: my old standalone iSight, a gorgeous example of Apple design sadly idle since the advent of built-in iSights, and a lovely new Intel Mac Mini that was recently scored on sale at MicroCenter with plans to set it up for my older two kids once I could get my hands on a small LCD monitor.

I figured in the meantime it would serve nicely as a baby monitor, since I couldn’t find a matching transmitter/receiver pair among the various baby monitors I had accumulated over the years. My idea was that it would live discreetly, headless and tailless (monitor, keyboard, and mouse-free) in the baby’s room, and broadcast both locally on my network and also wide-area so grandparents could tune in remotely.

For the initial setup, I needed a monitor, but fortunately my TV has a PC (VGA) port, which I used to configure the mini. I set it to login automatically to the main account and join my Airport network. In System Preferences, I enabled screen sharing and added iChat as a login item. In iChat, I enabled Bonjour and instant messaging, added myself as a buddy, and restricted chats to preapproved users under security preferences. Because I didn’t want to connect via screen sharing every time I wanted ot initiate a chat, I typed the following into Terminal so that it would auto-accept any incoming video chats:

defaults write com.apple.ichat AutoAcceptVCInvitations 1

After that, I set it adrift on the network. From my main computer, I watched the mini pop up on Bonjour after reboot, and we were off and running.

While this worked great for my own local use, it had some inherent restrictions: remote users (aka “grandparents who love to watch sleeping grandsons”) couldn’t join the chat easily. Spouses at work had issues with company restrictions on AIM. Plus, it was iPhone-unfriendly; the holy grail for me was turning the iPhone into a video terminal that followed me around.

I went through a few different ideas: private channel on Justin.tv (great for multiple viewers, but awash in advertising, restricted at work, and unavailable on iPhone), Skype (great video, automatic call acceptance and limited iPhone capabilities, but terrible for multiple viewers), and complicated setups involving QuickTime Broadcaster. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel (well, no more than I already was doing), I hit upon SJKM‘s iCam software, which is an iPhone application & accompanying cross-platform video streaming tool specifically designed for video monitoring, available in the iTunes store for $4.99. Initially dismissed for lack of audio, it has since enabled audio monitoring and non-iPhone web access, making it an almost perfect setup. Why “almost?” Well, for reasons I cannot quite figure out, the video is much choppier than AIM, Bonjour, Justin.tv, or Skype. But it works over 3G and Wi-Fi, and it connects multiple viewers without requiring conference setup.

And now, with SJKM’s latest update, iCam can run in the background and push notification will alert me to sound or video motion. I have not yet enabled that feature, as it is a $.99 add-on and still pending Apple approval in the store.

Ultimately, I ended up using a variety of different applications, but I can report a lot of very satisfied relatives dreamily cooing at the computer screens from Portland, OR, to Philadelphia, PA. All thanks to the mac mini and the standalone iSight. And one very cute baby (if I do say so myself.)

Upcoming: that’s great, but can you make it work in the dark? Adventures in IR…..

TUAWThe mighty mini, take two: DIY video baby monitor originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The mighty mini, take two: DIY video baby monitor originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 13, 2009.

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App Review

Many months ago I received a review copy of G-Map for the iPhone. It had its own maps and turn by turn directions, but no voice guidance, and North was always up. Apple was limiting nav apps at that time, and I had real trouble with G-Map. I couldn’t load it on my iPhone. It kept locking up about halfway through the process. Extensive back and forth with the developers in Japan came to nothing, so I gave up. Finally, last April, my colleague Steve Sande was able to load it, and reviewed it for TUAW.

Now, with iPhones having new hardware and new software, G-Map [App Store] works and is certainly a competitor to the subscription-based AT&T app. You buy G-Map in one of several editions. G-Map West, at US$34.99, covers the Western States, and G-Map East covers, you guessed it, the Eastern U.S. It is also priced at 34.99. It gets a bit tricky, because some states like Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee and Wisconsin are split. If you travel all around those states you will probably want both editions.

There is also a California edition for $19.99, and one at the same price for New Jersey and New York. Versions for Canada and Europe are coming. All the G-Map modules require iPhone software version 3.0.

So how does it work? Pretty well, but with some caveats. It’s accurate at getting your position. The voice directions are quite audible, especially compared to the distorted AT&T app. The on-screen display gives you your speed limit, distance to your next turn, distance to destination and time to destination. It also plots major intersections in a very detailed 3D view, which is helpful. This works in the largest 185 metro areas.

Another plus is that all the maps are on your phone. If you slide out of AT&T’s service area the maps are still there; in contrast, the Telenav-based AT&T Navigator app will not work if you don’t have data coverage, as the maps are downloaded on-demand.

There are some downsides. The POI database is pretty thin in smaller towns. From Southern Arizona it couldn’t find the Phoenix Airport. It probably would have found it when I was closer, but even a POI search didn’t bring it up. As I was sitting at a long established car wash, it said no car washes were nearby. It did better with restaurants, banks, and hospitals. Like the AT&T app, there is no landscape mode, and you can’t get access to your address book, which is just plain silly.

It looks like the database, which comes from Navteq, has some errors, as do all such systems. Navigating to a restaurant, G-map reported it was on the left, when it was actually on the right.

Unlike the AT&T Navigator, G-Map has no real time traffic, but it does provide info from Navteq’s traffic statistics to predict trouble areas.

Even with some weakness, G-Map is a worthy competitor to the AT&T iPhone app. If you have the room on your phone (G-Map West is 824 MB), you can navigate without worrying about cell network access.

It’s cheaper than a monthly subscription would be over time, although there is no word when maps will be updated and what the cost will be. If the G-Map developers clean up the POI database, and add a lot more to it, I think they may sell a lot of apps. As it is, for getting to places where you know the address, it works about as well as the AT&T Navigator at a fraction of the cost. Of course more choices are coming, including the much discussed TomTom app, so you may want to wait it out and see what other offerings come along.

Here are some screen shots that show some of the major features:

TUAWAnother turn by turn app with voice for the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another turn by turn app with voice for the iPhone originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 7, 2009.

Following the posts @ Mac Rumors I removed each service one by one, added Airport, restarted, and it works!

Remember to hit apply after removing the services. Then add Airport. Hit apply again. Restart the computer. And it should work.

I noticed that I have to have the hard wifi switch set to on when the computer is starting. Not sure if this maters, but just a note.

Wind U100 Hackintosh w/ 407159-001 native Airport originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on May 8, 2009.